The Artist at Work

The first portrait presented in former U.S. President George W. Bush’s second art book, Out of Many, One: Portraits of America’s Immigrants, is probably his best. Depicting Joseph Kim, a young man who came to the United States as a North Korean refugee, the painting exhibits many formal qualities that Bush has shown in his past portraits of veterans and world leaders. The canvas presents a tightly cropped image of the subject’s head rendered with thick, visible brushwork in bright colors. There is, however, a depth in the lavender shading of Kim’s face, the unblended orange of his collared shirt, and the sensitivity of his gaze out of the canvas and away from the viewer that defies the flatness typical of many of Bush’s works in earlier publications and throughout Out of Many, One.

Part of the two-dimensionality of the former president’s work can be attributed to process: Despite having met most of his subjects (and in some cases knowing them quite well), he typically paints from photographs. Kim’s portrait is no exception to this approach; however,